Less danger makes it tough at the top in India

Malcolm Knox

For a top-order batsman in India, 30 or 40 is a worse score than zero. Hearts and careers have been broken over promising starts that turned to dust. On Australia's 2001 tour, Michael Slater and Justin Langer averaged 33.20 and 32.20 respectively.

Slater's scores were 10, 19 not out, 42, 43, 4 and 48. Langer's were 19, 58, 28, 35 and 21. Pretty good in a losing series. Both lost their spots after the tour, Langer immediately and Slater in months. By contrast, Ricky Ponting, who scored 17 runs at 3.40, held his place, as did Mark Waugh, who averaged less than Langer and Slater.

The reasoning is clear. Top-order batsmen have the best of it in India. The ball is new, the bounce is true, and the seamers are often functioning in a supernumerary role, to take the shine off the ball almost in a co-operative effort with the opening batsmen. The walls of relentless spin, forcing the batsmen to play ball after ball, with close fielders gasping and yelping, have yet to close in.

Batsmen who do not capitalise on a good start against the new ball are twice culpable, not only for getting out but for creating a crisis for their teammates. In 2001, the middle-order failures of Ponting, Waugh and Adam Gilchrist, who scored two runs in his last four innings of the series, were seen as victims of Slater's and Langer's profligacy.

Advertisement

For the current tour, the implications are obvious. Forget the first-day performances of David Warner and Phillip Hughes. Warner was in such rusty touch that any run was a bonus, while Hughes never got going. The major disappointments were Ed Cowan and Shane Watson.

Your heart bleeds for Cowan. He is always batting against the doubters as well as the bowlers, and this time he was in terrific form. It is not unusual to see one of Australia's openers struggling to get the ball off the square while the other makes Test cricket look easy, but normally it's the other way around. On Friday, while Warner's footwork was what you'd expect from someone who hasn't batted for a month, Cowan was quickly into position, head over the ball, crisp off front and back feet. To the spinners, he left his crease and turned hand grenades into half volleys. There was not a shadow of a question over Cowan's suitability for this level. It really looked like his day, particularly when he lofted Harbhajan Singh over the rope.

He perished trying to do it again, misjudging the more dangerous Ravi Ashwin. Cowan can't be blamed for an aggressive plan. But, as Gilchrist once said, the disorienting thing about being in a batting changing room in India is that you can be sailing along for hours without a care, and five minutes later everyone is rushing about looking for gloves and pads.

Cowan's dismissal threatened to set off such a crisis. This is why performances in India are subject to a different kind of assessment.

By all normal measures, Cowan batted well and was out doing the right thing, taking a risk and attacking, and getting Australia off to a bright start. But the impact of his dismissal was potentially disastrous and, as Slater and Langer learnt, the type of thing that leaves a black mark that must quickly be erased before it solidifies into an impression.

After Cowan and Hughes fell, with Warner looking as if he could be out any minute, Watson made a commanding entry. His front-foot technique, like Matthew Hayden's, is well adapted for Indian conditions. His bat looked a few sizes broader than regulations allow. Everything was coming out of the middle until his concentration was disturbed by a break, and he played back, fatally, to an Ashwin skidder.

So the drama of Cowan and Watson, individually and as a pair, continues. Each looked like 56 million rupees (a million bucks). Each squandered a chance. Each learnt a lesson about concentration. The forward challenge is to stop the momentary anguish from turning into a pattern of despair.

The other salient point about the opening exchange is that India's bowlers are there for the taking, and Australia's gamble in playing five specialist batsmen might pay off. With conditions to suit, only Ashwin was threatening, and only at the start. Ashwin has a record of becoming easier to play as batsmen get used to him. So it was on Friday. Harbhajan has been a fading force for several years, and did nothing to justify his strange selection ahead of left-armer Pragyan Ojha.

That Michael Clarke and Moises Henriques could come in at the most difficult time, with the pitch turning, the spinners on top and the field set close, and exert their dominance might have a lasting psychological impact on the contest. They played as if there was nothing to fear. When you watch Henriques, he often seems to have teammates laughing around him. When he joined Clarke, the under-pressure captain was cackling away between overs. In the process, the bogymen of the Indian spin attack vanished, the sloppiness of the hosts' cricket was exposed, and Australia took the initiative.

They called India's bluff. Now the top order will be called on for ruthlessness in driving the message home for four Tests.